Saturday, August 23, 2008

We've resumed work on video projects. Here are a few seconds from Blast Radius.

The air is starting to cool slightly, though experience says we'll have another week of hellish heat right after school starts in Sept. The nights are cooling.

The studio is getting a good cleaning in anticipation of Halloween work. We have switched (as of today) to the fall schedule, which means getting up very early.

We are spending less time dodging debris, more time being productive. We have made things---the Anti Summer Neil Gaiman Rat is really very cool and there are Poppets in Fake Pants. And the studio looks even more like mad scientists are at work.

Some of you sent good things my way, including words and good wishes. They were all put to good use. Thank you.

4 Strange Light. Larry Niven has begun the next story for the series. He sent me his notes. Sometimes my job is fucking perfect.

I took a whole series of sunlight shots. The desert has its good points.

5 Lisa shooting at night---still over 100 degrees.The desert sucks.

6, 7, 8, 9 Studio work. The studio is evolving. It looks less like an art studio and more like a very strange laboratory every day. Eventually it may begin to think for itself.

Aside from that--We're very nearly finished with the Anti-summer Neil Gaiman rat. I asked Neil if the Neil Rat was stuck in the Poppet's Anti-Summer world, what book would he want with him? He chose, The Wind in the Willows.

Today was for putting out spotfires and dodging bullets. Tomorrow is a studio day.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

For someone like me (and there are many like me) this blog is a weird sort of tightrope.

Its purpose, from the beginning, was to open a window onto the process that creates the art.Because of the nature of my work and the nature of my brain, that process (and therefore this blog) has been less about nuts and bolts and more about thoughts and experiences.A lot of daily life gets thrown into the mix.

So, always, there is the balancing act between honesty and privacy. That has seemed easy enough. I step along, one foot at a time, preferring the pole to the parasol, because I've seen Wile-E fall often enough to know an umbrella can't slow a fall.

Possibly I should do what my friends and colleagues do---write it as fiction. Perhaps I should rely on the filter of time.

But art is different from fiction. Neil defined it for me once---I can't grasp it now, the entanglement of truth in lie and fiction in reality. I'll ask him again. It was extremely clever---of course it was. But I do know that art is immediate and visceral and won't wait for filters.

These last years I've crawled and stumbled along this path to understanding, inviting you to come with me, writing about the experiences and showing you the art, hoping you could feel the connections. Allowing me to see the connections. Listening to yours.

Always looking for understanding, for honing this visual alphabet I've concocted, believing that eventually I'll become more fluent, yet accepting that the cypher and symbols will evolve, as with any language. And that we might understand it together instead of alone.

The forums are dead for now. Dead from neglect. That's on me. So comment here freely. I'll answer. Answer each other too.

The thing is, this summer has been a personal explosion following a long season of something hard and oppressive and as yet undefined. The details are private, as they should be. But at least for now, the experience and the process of recovery is evident in everything I do. I know that you are aware of this. I find myself surrounded by debris--some of it still falling-- and, though grateful to have survived, now I must assess damage and tentatively find new footing.

The rope seems tighter, and higher, and I no longer see the net. It no longer matters whether it was actually ever there, does it? Do we create our own nets? If so, are they 'real?" I don't know the answer for this one.

So. Here we are.

I'm not fragile. Thinner, and possibly a little harder, but present. I know you get it. I know you experience the same pains and look for the same answers that I do. Of course you do, we're human beings. It's a small planet.

I might fall. Or you might. I might tell you too much and embarrass myself or someone else. I may tell you too little and fail to be of any help in your own searching.

There it is. I'm okay with that. The work is calling me and I'm going back to it. The answers are in there, because that's where the questions are.I have a clean new apron and a fresh pot of coffee.

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Lisa is the creator of Poppets and other art. Talented authors tend to write stories about images she makes. At Strange Studios, in Palm Springs, California, she and fellow artist Benton Warren create fantastical kinetic works. This blog is about Poppets, life in the studio and other strange goings on.